Research paperAssessing the harms of cannabis cultivation in Belgium
Introduction
Over the last three decades, the supply side of the worldwide cannabis market has changed significantly. Numerous countries around the world have switched from importing foreign cannabis to domestically producing their own supplies. This shift to domestic cultivation has been particularly pronounced in North America and Europe, and seems irreversible in the medium-term (Hafley and Tewksbury, 1995, Walker et al., 1998, Plecas et al., 2002, Spapens et al., 2007, Decorte et al., 2011.
In Belgium too, domestic cultivation has boomed. The number of plantations dismantled by the Belgian law enforcement authorities increased exponentially from 35 in 2003 to 1212 in 2013, while the number of plants discovered grew over 440% from 73,344 in 2006 to 396,758 in 2013 (Centrale Dienst Drugs, 2014). Belgium is one of the European countries that tolerate small-scale cultivation for personal use. The changes in legislation that occurred in 2003 and 2004 made the possession of 3 g of cannabis by adults and the cultivation of one female plant for personal use tolerable (not meaning ‘decriminalized’) offences. This legislative shift separated cannabis from other drugs and granted the prosecution more discretion regarding the enforcement of cannabis-related offences (Decorte, 2007, EMCDDA, 2011). However, the increase in plantations as well as the fear of growing violence and organized crime involvement prompted the highest Belgian policy-making bodies to prioritize the repression of cannabis cultivation in the last two National Security Plans, the two multi-annual documents defining the police strategic priorities (Ministeries van Binnenlandse Zaken en Justitie, 2008, Ministeries van Binnenlandse Zaken en Justitie, 2012). By doing so, Belgium has gone in the opposite direction of other jurisdictions that have recently legalized cannabis cultivation: Uruguay, as well as Colorado and Washington State and, more recently, Alaska, Oregon and Washington, DC in the United States (e.g., Bewley-Taylor et al., 2014, Sebens, 2014).
The Belgian policy-makers’ decisions have not been based on an empirical analysis of the domestic cannabis production. There is only one empirical study of cannabis cultivation in Belgium, which was co-authored by one of us (Decorte & Tuteleers, 2007) and focused on small-scale cultivation. The majority of studies in other countries has, instead, focused on large-scale, commercially oriented growers, mostly relying on police data (Bovenkerk and Hogewind, 2002, Hough et al., 2003, Weisheit, 1991; among the few exceptions, see Decorte and Tuteleers, 2007, Potter, 2010). Empirical studies that focus only on large-scale commercially oriented growers, base their conclusions on police data, and take the perspective of law enforcement agencies, may lead to false perceptions of the prevalence of different types of growers and growing operations and related criminal behaviors (Wilkins & Casswell, 2003). They can have important consequences for future policy choices. Very few studies have yet tackled the whole spectrum of cannabis cultivation from small-scale to large-scale growers.
Moreover, no study has ever been carried out in Belgium or elsewhere to systematically map and assess the harms associated with cannabis cultivation or to distinguish these harms by type of growers. In the legal doctrine, though, the harm “caused” by a criminal activity is considered crucial in justifying the very criminalization of such an activity and the assignment of penalties (e.g., Ashworth, 2006: 30–39; for a review of this debate, see Paoli and Greenfield (2013)). Moreover, several national and regional policy-making and law-enforcement agencies in Europe and elsewhere are currently considering “harm” as a basis for prioritizing and targeting criminal activities (Paoli, 2014). In its latest Serious and Organized Crime Threat Assessment (SOCTA), for example, Europol (2013) identifies the crimes to be considered most serious and thus to be prioritized in the new EU-wide multi-annual policy cycle on serious and organized crime, largely on the basis of the harm these crimes generate.
Thus, identifying the bearers of the harms associated with cannabis cultivation and systematically assessing the incidence and severity of these harms constitute an innovative and valuable contribution not only to the scientific but also the policy debate on crime and crime control, and specifically on cannabis legalization. An empirical assessment of the harms, in fact, can provide the evidence needed to elevate the debate on cannabis legalization beyond mere moral values or governments’ financial appetites.
For such an exercise, we have relied on a new methodology developed by Greenfield and Paoli (2013) and already tested to assess the harms of cocaine and human trafficking (Paoli et al., 2013, Vander Beken et al., 2012). Greenfield and Paoli's “harm assessment framework” provides the means of identifying, evaluating and, with some restrictions, comparing harms across criminal activities, and thus constitutes a potentially important advancement for evidence-informed policy making. It extends von Hirsch and Jareborg's (1991) seminal typology of harms, by considering other bearers, in addition to individuals. Unlike this and other drug-related taxonomic predecessors (e.g. MacCoun et al., 1996, Newcombe, 1992), Greenfield and Paoli's framework has the advantage of being applicable to many different forms of crime, including those complex crimes wherein harms do not derive from a single actor or activity. In the case of cannabis cultivation, we can thus assess not only the harms resulting from the cultivation process itself but also those resulting from its accompanying activities, such as electricity theft, use and threat of violence and corruption.
Moreover, unlike the cost-of-crime literature (for a review, see Heaton, 2010), the framework does not focus only on the harms that can be quantified, realizing – as others have done (e.g., Caulkins, Reuter, & Coulson, 2011) – the incalculability of some harms. Where available, we use quantitative data to inform our evaluation, but the framework does not fundamentally require quantification. This flexibility buys us the freedom of employing alternative means of analysis; we do not, so to speak, leave any credible information on the table. Following von Hirsch and Jareborg (1991), the national security doctrine and other scholars in the drug policy community (e.g. Nutt, King, & Philips, 2010), the framework also acknowledges the limitations of expert judgment, but accepts it as valid. In such a way, it avoids giving “a misleading sense of precision” (von Hirsch & Jareborg, 1991: 28). Last but not least, Paoli and Greenfield (2013) acknowledge the daunting conceptual and technical challenges of assessing the harms of a criminal activity and spell out the limitations of the framework.
To meet both the above-mentioned knowledge gaps and policy needs, we designed our study in such a way as to cover the whole spectrum of cannabis growers. Given our focus on cannabis cultivation, though, we do not assess the harms resulting from cannabis dealing or use.
The paper is organized as follows. In the first section we describe the multi-method research design underlying the study, including the harm assessment methodology, and briefly present our data. In the second section, we sketch the business model of cannabis cultivation in Belgium, single out its accompanying criminal activities and identify the resulting possible harms. In the third section, we assess the severity and incidence of the harms related with cannabis cultivation. In the fourth we consider which harms deserve prioritization and, in the fifth, the causes of the harms. Some concluding remarks and policy implications follow.
Section snippets
The research design and the data
Our assessment of the harms associated with cannabis cultivation in Belgium is based on extensive data collection and analysis in the two main language communities of Belgium, Dutch-speaking Flanders and French-speaking Wallonia.
The business model and the possible harms of cannabis cultivation in Belgium
As suggested in Greenfield and Paoli (2013), we began by constructing a business model to characterize the key operational phases of the activity and describe the functions and modes of possible accompanying and enabled activities. The business model provides essential building blocks of information for the identification of the possible harms and bearers, the assessment of the harms and the establishment of the latter's causality.
For cannabis cultivation, as it occurs in Belgium and presumably
What is the severity and incidence of the harms?
The next step in the harm assessment framework consists of evaluating the severity and incidence of the harms associated with cannabis cultivation and its accompanying activities on the basis of the two above-mentioned scales. In this evaluation we only include harms for which we have credible evidence from our primary data or the literature. As such, a harm that we deemed possible on the basis of the business model might not materialize in our analysis with a rating.
We begin by evaluating the
Which harms deserve prioritization?
Next, by combining the two scales of severity and incidence, we can identify the harms deserving prioritization (see Table 3). As shown in the fourth column of Table 5, few of the harms associated with cannabis cultivation in Belgium rank higher than low. Within the category of the harms to individuals, we rank the loss of life generated by violence as a medium-high priority because it is catastrophic but happens rarely. We consider the grave but rare harms to individuals’ physical and
Which types of growers generate most harms?
A systematic analysis of the survey data based on the respondents’ scale of cultivation and motivation is beyond the scope of this paper. Nonetheless, the data used earlier indicate that some harms are almost exclusively generated by large-scale commercially oriented growers. These harms are never or hardly ever admitted by the survey respondents, who – as described earlier – are predominantly small-scale growers with no or very limited commercial motivation. Most harms were instead identified
What are the causes of the harms?
The final step of the assessment process consists of establishing the causality of harms. Following Greenfield and Paoli (2013), we proceeded in two steps: we assessed, first, the distance between harms and the primary activity and, second, the extent to which the harms arise from the policy environment. As for the distance, we conclude that all the harms are directly associated with cannabis cultivation and its accompanying activities, as they transpire in Belgium.
In the case of the link with
Conclusions
This article has aimed to map and assess the harms associated with cannabis cultivation in Belgium. To fulfil its aim, the article has relied on a multi-method research design, involving a web survey of 1293 respondents, primarily, small-scale growers, and the analysis of three interconnected sets of qualitative data on large-scale growers and traffickers. The mapping and assessment of the harm was carried out on the basis of a seminal methodology developed by Greenfield and Paoli (2013), which
Acknowledgements
This paper is based on the research project ‘Cannabis production in Belgium: assessment of the nature and harms, and implications for priority setting’ (CANMARKT; grant number DR/00/063). The study was commissioned and funded by the Belgian Science Policy Office, in the framework of the ‘Research programme in support of the Federal Drugs Policy Document’.
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